A Sound that Never Sounded

Abstract

/ Cylinder recordings as an early form of reproducible sound media were first used in 1877 and continued to be produced commercially up until 1929 by Edison. The many cylinders that exist today in various states of decomposition have become objects of concern for those with an interest in historical sound recordings. With this concern leading to preservation efforts converting cylinder sounds into digital form, how should a cylinder sound and with the transformative potential for digital manipulation readily available, how should a digital file of a cylinder record sound? This article discusses the production process of both cylinder recordings and their digital conversions, revealing how fidelity never actually existed in the production process. The University of California Santa Barbara's Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project exemplifies a digital preservation project that reveals what is valued during the digital conversion process. By describing how the cylinders are imbued with meaning through the concerns of manufactures, archivists, internet users and collectors, this article proves that processes concerned with the objectification of sound are motivated by specific social and technological desires motivated by nostalgia for an imagined sound fidelity.